Getting Women Interested in Go Programming in London

It’s not exactly a secret that women are a minority amongst software developers. Women are not the only minority in this line of endeavour of course but as they make up roughly half the population improving gender diversity would make a very big impact. Plus, as a woman working in tech for several decades, I decided I wanted to do more to encourage other women to join me.

Some areas of software development are even more lacking in gender balance than others. Systems programming is one of those areas, and devops is another. The Go programming language, developed by engineers at Google and first released in 2009, happens to have its main adoption in those domains. Therefore, despite the fact that the London-based meetup group Ladies Who Code has nearly 2000 members, and Women Who Code has well over 2000 members, it was not a surprise to me that hardly any women ever went to the local Go meetups.

In September of last year, I noticed that Sarah Adams had recently created a Women Who Go group (http://www.womenwhogo.org) in San Francisco and it seemed to be doing very well. I was inspired by her actions and asked her if she minded if I started a chapter in London. She was only too pleased about it, and I noticed that a number of chapters in other cities and countries formed in fairly quick succession. I told the Go London User Group about this new group, received plenty of encouragement and offers of sponsorship. Our membership is growing and enthusiastic so I am really looking forward to seeing what we can achieve in 2016!